For Hannah -- and for many young children -- the point of hide and seek is to be found. Over time, however, we start to get lost. We hide from ourselves. We hide from what we know is right. We start to hide from God.

Rambling around narrow walkways, I say hello to Mr. and Mrs. Schwartz, Tootsie's parents, some Rothschilds and all the senior Levins -- plus, sadly, by now, a few of my own contemporaries. It's a place where I feel oddly at home.

Even though the West Village offers "lesbian nights" on Fridays in hallowed locales like the Stonewall Inn and the Monster Bar NYC, it's a far cry from the dozens of spaces and nights for gay men spackled across the Five Boroughs.

Few fictional characters, particularly from television, have been as enduring in the public consciousness, memorable and profound as Spock, and few actors have both inhabited and created a character as fully and brilliantly as Leonard Nimoy did with Spock.

The holiday of Purim can lead also to hatred and vengeance. When I was young and grew up in a Reform Jewish congregation, we never read the whole book of Esther, so I never got to the back of the book.

Perhaps money is the best starting point for experiencing Shabbat. Money's impact is so universal in our lives that putting it aside is truly our greatest hope, an inescapable call to mindfulness which leads to independence of external obligation.

Following the terror attacks in Copenhagen, where a Jewish man was killed last weekend, a group of young Muslims in Norway are organizing a peace rally at an Oslo synagogue on the Jewish Sabbath, this upcoming Saturday February 21.

This is my first fully public statement criticizing a sitting Israeli government official. This statement comes after careful consideration because I am heartbroken about the current state of affairs. Like an increasing number of American Jews, I want to make it clear that Netanyahu does not speak for me.

I grew up in an Orthodox Jewish community in Boston that felt both nurturing and stifling. If anyone in the community struggled financially, they knew that tzedeka (or charity) would be raised to sustain them

Apocalyptic scriptures share one feature: They were always composed in distressing times for the benefit of desperate people who occupied a particular moment in history. They suffered politically and economically, and only a dramatic rescue by God could help.

You know you're a bigot when you can't take out the word "Muslim" from a sentence you stated and replace it with "Jew" and still have it be socially acceptable. Let's start out nice and easy. A sentence I get with great regularity: "You're a Muslim apologist."

In many ways I can remember every detail of the liberation that happened 70 years ago. Nobody prepared us for what liberation would be like. I hoped then I could go home and find my family. We had a daily saying, like a mantra, "Someday soon I will be free and I will go home." But going home to me meant reuniting with my mother, father, and two older sisters, not just an empty house with four walls, which is what we found.

The unprecedented backlash against Netanyahu's upcoming speech demonstrates what may be a historic moment in the history of U.S./Israeli relations. This moment is also significant in that it demonstrates the growing rift between the American Jewish community and Israel, a rift that Netanyahu has helped to accelerate.

About Judaism

Stretching 4,000 years back to its patriarch Abraham, Judaism is one of the oldest monotheistic religions in the world. A Jew is anyone who is born of a Jewish mother or who has converted in accordance with Jewish law. The foundation of Jewish law (halakha) and tradition is the Torah (also known as the Pentateuch or the Five Book of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy). Additional authoritative texts include the Talmud and the Midrash.
Observant Jews recite prayers three times daily, with a fourth prayer added on the Sabbath and holidays. The Shema Yisrael ("Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is one") is a centerpiece of Jewish prayer services and encapsulates the monotheistic essence of Judaism. The Sabbath commemorates God’s day of rest after six days of creation. Widely observed Jewish holidays are Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Purim, Shavuot and Hanukkah. In 2010, the world Jewish population was estimated at 13.4 million, or roughly 0.2 percent of the total world population.